THE Department of Education will continue distributing “Asya: Pag-usbong ng Kabihasnan “(Asia: Birth of Civilization) to public high schools without correcting the errors that depict Taiwan as a country, in violation of the one-China policy that the Philippine government upholds.
A Daily Tribune report quoted Education Secretary Jesli Lapus as saying that the DepEd has no more time to rectify the error in the Araling Panlipunan II textbook as classes in public high schools will open on June 10.
Lapus said 200,000 of the 1.39 million copies of the textbook have been shipped to of Aurora, Batanes, Masbate, Romblon, Leyte, Samar, Cotabato, Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga Sibugay, Agusan del Sur and del Norte and Surigao del Sur and del Norte, which are among the 26 Social Reform Agenda (SRA) or poorest provinces that will receive the textbook.
An ABS-CBN Online News account , meanwhile, said Lapus has denied that the 492-page “Asya: Pag-usbong ng Kabihasnan” violated the one-China policy and was seized by Chinese customs.
“Hindi naman pwedeng sabihin nila na nag-violate tayo ng one-China policy dahil pinalabas na ng [Chinese] Customs ito (It can’t be said we violated the one-China policy because the Chinese released the shipment),” Lapus said in an interview with DzMM radio.
VERA Files earlier reported that a shipment of about 400,000 copies of “Asya” was released only after Education Undersecretary Teodosio Sangil issued a certification to the Chinese authorities and the China-based Ningbo Bin-Bin Stationery Co., the textbook’s printer, plastered a sticker on the cover to correct the map that labelled Taiwan as a country. Errors found inside the book, however, remain.
Lawyer Rufino Policarpio, legal counsel for book author Dr. Grace Estella Mateo, maintained in an interview also with DzMM that there are no factual errors in the book, published by Vibal Publishing.
He said the reported lists showing the Asian countries, their land areas, capital, population and per capita income, come from the Asian Development Bank’s Web site.
Policarpio said the content of the textbook will not be changed and the copies are set to be distributed to public elementary students.
Quoting a source in the DepEd, the Tribune reported that Lapus has told DepEd regional directors to ask public school teachers under their jurisdiction to inform their students that the Social Studies textbook contains an error, and that Taiwan is really part of the territory of China and is under its government’s rule.
The source said Lapus decided to take this tact as a matter of practicality as suspending the textbook’s distribution and having it revised would be costly for the government.